In my practice, I can say that the second most common concern after marital problems is workplace stress.
That shouldn’t be too surprising. Almost everyone I see is employed and their livelihood is dependent upon their performance at work. The people I see who are unemployed (or financially dependent upon someone who is unemployed) are under even more stress.
So how can therapy help? When clients talk about stress and what to do about it, I explain to them the difference between difficulties and problems. This is a distinction I learned years ago from a great therapist named Paul Watzlawick.
In short, difficulties are all those circumstances in our lives over which we have little control; it rains on the day we were to play golf, our plane is snowed in and we miss two days of vacation in Mexico, someone we love is seriously ill or dies, our company downsizes and we’re laid off, we have a boss who is demanding and unsympathetic.
The list is infinite. Problems, on the other hand, are what we turn our difficulties into: Because our golf game is cancelled we’re upset and yell at our children; Because we miss two days of vacation, we’re in a foul mood and ruin the next five; Because we lose a loved one, we become depressed and are unavailable to give emotional support to the people who count on us; Because we’re laid off, we start drinking heavily and make it impossible to find another job.
Therapy isn’t very useful in avoiding difficulties. It is, however, very useful in helping clients to prevent turning these difficulties into problems. When a client describes herself or himself as overstressed, we begin to talk about managing difficulties in ways that the client describes as effective, healthy, and necessary. Through these conversations, clients are able to rewire their brains (actually reroute their neural pathways) in a way that reduces the amount of cortisol their brains produce.